Fuel Prices...

I just filled up my truck yesterday....with diesel....up here in Canajer it's still pretty high...


BUT WHY DO THE SUMB*TCHES RAISE THE PRICES AT THE FIRST BREATH OF A RUMOR ABOUT PRICES GOING UP AND LOWER THEM WEEKS AFTER THE PRICES GO DOWN?

ARRRRRGGGGHHH!

1.12/liter last week,
1.20/liter this week.

($1.20 Cdn / liter is about US$5.67/usgallon.)

Jon.

/rant mode off!

Just curious, what is the tax on fuel in Canada. There is a huge debate in the U.S. right now about the Keystone Pipeline and how it will reduce our fuel costs. Environmental concerns have been a concern, but after the last two railcar disasters, the pipeline seems safer.

It is believed your taxes are high on fuel because you could not sell it for less here. Your thoughts?

They can just as olddude said, they own and control all aspects of the industry. Very rare are the independent gas stations anymore. Those few that do exist are basically told what to sell for if they want to keep their franchise. Most have direct satellite antenna link keeping track for the corporate office.

Patriot,

Fuel taxes are kinda steep here:

Province of BC tax: about 22 cents per litre
Federal gas tax: about 16 cents per litre.
Total tax: 38 cents per litre. On gas that the pump price is about $1.03 a litre, including the tax.

It varies all over the map across Canada. Big cities add to the gas taxes to pay for public transit and the like. The oil province, Alberta, has a total gas tax of about 24 cents per litre.

I have no idea about keeping taxes high to export it. I do know I can zip across the border and buy gas in Idaho for one heck of a lot less, but get dinged if I try to bring a barrel back.


Jon.

Jon I don't know if you saw my post on another thread. Here in Southern Cal. at the Torrance Exxon/Mobil refinery there was a major explosion. Resulting in damage to the refinery, estimated repairs to take two to three months minimum. Refinery does over 150,000 barrels of oil a day. The explosion happened at 8:50 am, at 12 noon my local Chevron station was up $.05 (just over 3 hrs.) by 4 pm it was up $.10. Probably will only affect us locally here in Southern California. It doesn't take the industry long to react! They are saying part of the refinery is still operational. This refinery supply's 10% of California's gasoline. The explosion was felt for a three mile radius around the plant, so it was a big one.

Its a racket, isn't it?

Like others said, they not only own the game, they own the rulemakers and our wallets!

I guess I gotta get numb to it. Same thing here with electricity rates. The power authority is a government owned corporation. They p*ssed the profits away for years by taking every dime back into the government, and now they need to do some major updating to the power system. Guess what? Major jack to power rates to "pay for the upgrades". Whatever happened to socking away a few millions for the last 30 years to pay for updates?

I bought my old diesel truck as a test bench to try burning used oil. Gotta get to that little task...

Jon.

I'm not sure what to make of it all.

Irving Oil, a Canadian company, has all -or-most of the fuel business here in the Northeastern U.S. It seems like a really good company. I've got no complaint with them.

Emera, another Canadian company, took over ALL of the electricity business here in Maine a few years ago. They've done a fine job and the rates have held steady. Quite reasonable when you consider that it's service to a rural area.

I suspect that the dissatisfaction may have more to do with different economic systems. Here in the states it's capitalism (in theory) where Canada has something that more closely resembles a Socialist system.

One way of looking at it: Assume that you ALWAYS have to pay for the goods & services that you receive from the government. There are direct, indirect, and hidden taxes everywhere you go. It just follows that countries that have large bureaucracies and provide more
government services will have a higher tax rate.

There is an important exception ! If you can exploit and export your natural resources you can get somebody else to help foot the bill for your government services.

Australia has been exporting it's mineral wealth to China for quite some time now. The govt in the land down under was actually running a surplus for years.

Russia was doing quite well with it's oil exports. The profits from the sale of oil went to the government and that made up a huge chunk of their national budget. They're in a bit of a bind right now with crude oil prices being down.

Maybe it's the same with Canada ? It exports oil, natural gas, forestry products, and things harvested from the ocean. If the income from those markets are off the government will have to turn to it's citizens to pay the bill for services they receive.

Thanks for the different point of view, Scrappah.

I originally was ranting about how fast the fuel rates changed when things were going up as compared to how slow they moved when they were going down. Not really much to do with the govamint there, but it easily morphs to trashing the gov't.

I think the oil company price setting runs VERY close to the law up here, and probably is in the same boat south of the 49th. That is to do with collusion and price setting. They seem to have a big talkfest about it in the news about every 5 years or so, and the gov't does some investigating, probably a few cases of whiskey get shipped around, and everything goes quiet again.

But that's just my opinion, and I'm a cynic from out in the sticks.

Jon.

.....dammmit, turn off!.....click, click, click, click, smash!! /rant mode OFF!!

I appreciate your patience Jon. I know a little bit about how the American system works (in theory ) but not so much about the Canadian system.

We grumble about high fuel prices, windfall profits, and BIG OIL here but the thing to consider is it's not really the company that's reaping the harvest. These are publicly owned companies so it's the stock holders that benefit. You know .... some average guy with a 401 k. that has a diversified portfolio might have a few shares and something salted away for retirement. I know some oil company CEO's and they're doing okay too.

Hard to say ... maybe some of your key industries are government owned & operated ? That would be a different way of returning the profits to the people.

I've noticed that diesel hasn't come down much in these parts. Could be good old fashioned supply & demand. It used to be than #2 home heating oil and diesel were the exact same thing. The only difference was that you paid road tax on diesel.

That's changed some because the diesel is a much cleaner burning fuel now. None the less ... when they're distilling crude oil both #2 and diesel come out of the same fraction.

There's a wicked demand for home heating oil here this year. If you go by heating degree days the winters here have been getting progressively colder for the last three years.

Maybe the price of diesel will ease once the refineries shift their focus away from producing mass amounts of # 2 in favor of diesel.

Might be it's all just a racket .... I don't know. It seems like i've seen production reports on line somewhere in the past. You would be surprised at the amount of transparency there is in the industry. The OPEC stuff is particularly interesting.